My favorite cult-classic; The End of the Road!

On a Sunday evening in September 1988, I was resting on the bed with my wife Carla a little after 10PM, We had WABC radio on, I heard a little piano music and a folksy voice said, “It’s The End of The Road.” I was hooked. The End Of The Road was taped in Homer, Alaska. Supposedly once you got to a certain point in Homer you could not go any further and inspired the name of the host’s book. “As Far As You Can Go Without A Passport.” The host was Tom Bodett. The voice was familiar because he was already the voice of the Motel 6 hotel chain ending each commercial, “we’ll leave the light on for you.” Tom Bodett had his own Ed McMahon/Paul Schaeffer sidekick, a piano player named Johnny B (the “B” stood for Bushell). The show would start with some semi-humorous news about the people and events at “The End of Road, then launch into a story about people and events at “The End of the Road.” Not sure if these people or events were real or not, maybe somewhere in-between. But Tom had the folksiest voice ever and Johnny B kept playing that hypnotic piano. I loved it. My wife always fell asleep. Then they would have phone calls from listeners. I wondered if the caller were real or not, but eventually caught on to the joke when Tom Bodett told people to randomly dial ten digits and if you got them, you had the right number. Johnny B would play a song like “Can’t Explain,” Tom would have a somber story to tell and then…”The End of the Road” theme song would be played one final time that evening and Tom & Johnny B would invite us back for next week. People would compare it to Garrison Keillor’s radio show on PBS, “A Prairie Home Companion.” To me it was like nothing I had heard before.

The show was on every Sunday evening, for one hour, for the 1988/1989 season. I really don’t remember repeats or cancellations. I was thrilled. Here was this new wonderful, folksy, slight subversive radio show that made me smile, was literate, fun and had a great host and sidekick. I had grown up with Top 40 radio in the 1960s, FM radio in the 1970s and liked a little bit of talk radio personalities like Alex Bennett, Mark Simone, and Howard Stern. The End of the Road seemed to have all the makings of a long time hit. If Paul Harvey could be on the air as long as he was alive, why not this radio show? The show was renewed and 1989 went into 1990. They had no problem filling an hour. Today it is easy following your favorites on the internet along with like-minded fans. But ”back then” you got the newspaper to find information. So I was shocked to read in late January 1990 that The End of the Road was going off the air in a month! The article said the show has lost advertisers and on February 25, 1990, the show ended. No reunions ever again, nothing. Talk radio became political and very conservative. Liberals were never able to break through, even in New York City. While people recently mourned the passing of Lynn Samuels, she had trouble ever having a 5 day a week job on AM or FM radio. Jim Hightower’s Texas populist style was on Saturday afternoons for just a few months on WABC and boy do I wish I had a video of Duffy the Dog reacting to the sound of pigs during “The Pork Report.” My 30 year love affair with radio kind of ended then. Damn, I thought the show would become a big hit and still be on today.

Tom Bodett continues to write, be a Motel 6 spokesperson, be on shows from time-to-time, but I’ve never actively followed his career as I should have. Guess I really wanted Johnny B to be there too. Tom & I exchanged nice e-mails a few years back. I joined a Homer Facebook Group and I met Johnny B’s son in the group — and eventually Johnny B joined Facebook and I became his Facebook Friend. He continues to entertain and he’s a really nice guy. Wish he would play in New York. I’d get the V.I.P. package for that. Political commentator and writer, Shannyn Moore, who calls herself, “Just A Girl From Homer” told me on Twitter that she worked on that radio show, when she was in High School. Tom, Johnny & Shannyn don’t seem to realize they were part of something really special. I taped the last few episodes of the show and there must be 60+ hour shows that they did. Tom’s voice and Johnny B’s piano playing have always stayed in my head. At least once a week, I will be walking home from work and I’ll have some recollection of a Johnny B “boogie song” in my head. Even today my Facebook status update is a parody of something Tom Bodett once said on how to call him up. As the song says, “Can’t Explain.” I have yet to meet another fan of “The End of the Road” radio show. Is anyone else out there?